There are several definitions of this term and we've discussed them all at one time or another. One definition is that courses must be taken at the school issuing the degree. They can be online courses or not. Another definition is where you are required to live in the state/country of the school where you are enrolled. Some schools will not admit you if you are not a resident, some will charge a higher tuition rate. The third definition, and the one I'm interested in discussing in this thread, is the requirement that you come to the campus to attend seminars, meet with advisors, etc. Many of our members are disinterested in such programs for reasons that are easy enough to understand (travel time/expense, time from work/family, etc.) and so we frequently ignore these programs, even if they're 90% - 95% online. Some of our members (whose name rhyme with scoff) believe that such residencies are requirements for legitimacy. I, personally, believe that if it is well managed, a residency period might be used as a sort of vacation (even if you have to do some work). So I've decided to begin a list of programs that are mainly online but have some sort of residency requirement. In some cases it might be well work it. For example, it might be nice to take an occasional trip to England if you end up with a degree from Oxford University https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/online-courses
Sounds like another bullshit major. University of the Arts came about as the result of the merger of the Philadelphia Academy of Art and the Philadelphia Musical Academy several years ago. Their reputation today is largely centered around their theatre studies programs, which are among the elite in the country that feed Broadway on a regular basis. In the Humanities, they're most well known as the home of Camille Paglia, their professor of Humanities & Media Studies, and a prolific author of several books including the recently released Provocations. (I happen to be reading it at the moment, and it's basically a 700-page collection of older essays that had been published elsewhere. In other words, recycled bullshit.) (It reminds me of what Union came up with after OBR crashed down on them - more bullshit majors, like Educational Studies, Ethical & Creative Leadership, Humanities & Culture, and Public Policy & Social Change. And in doing so, Union sold its soul in terms of having creative programs. But that, of course, is another story.) Why Creativity? If UA wanted to have a credible Ph.D. program, they could have developed one in any of their established fields like the fine arts, generic performing arts, music, or theatre. Their reputation is so interdisciplinary that they could have established all three programs and used existing faculty for all of them. And still had the cohorts meet together for residencies. No, at $44,800 per year for a three-year program, this is simply another money-making opportunity that will result in graduates finding themselves unemployable. When they use this agree to apply for a teaching position in any other UA's primary areas, the response they are likely to get is, "Creativity? What kind of doctorate is that?" It's a shame, because I've always thought of UA as a top-notch school and have caught several of their major theatre performances. But with this program, they have joined the bullshit world.
Steve, as we know, is very hard to please. Of course, anything that even smells a little bit like a mill is absolutely out. We also know that non-US degrees are out, especially those shady South African degrees. Now we know that even a US RA degree is unacceptable if it is a “bullshit” degree. Oh well... Personally, I thought that this PhD in Creativity would be a perfect fit for some overachiever with an MFA as I imagine that those people are subject to the same “degree inflation” dynamics as our friends with MBAs. Perhaps my next submission will be less bullshitty. We’ll see.
OK, today we're going to talk about the demise of the Chevy Volt and how it relates to low residency degree programs https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/low-residency-online-education-and-demise-volt
Here's another, this one on offer from a nice school (expensive though) in Rhode Island. It might be attractive to some, especially if you lived in the Southern New England region and didn't have to travel too far to campus. https://salve.edu/humanities-phd
I travel a lot to begin with and have no problem with some residencies, though there would be a limit for me.
I recommend this article highly - it's one of the best I've seen at expounding on low-residency programs. This is a model that has, for the most part, died in favor of today’s totally online programs. But thanks to the low-residency model, I’m smarter and better than the rest of you, who are naïve enough to call your online graders and chat-meisters your “professors.” (Give me a break…) But at the same time, of course, I manage to remain humble. So when I see the fast-cheap-easy crowd hungering for programs with no residency whatsoever (especially at the graduate levels), I can’t help laughing. ‘Cause y’all have no idea what you’re missing.
Kiz, don’t be so sensitive – I never called your submission “bullshitty.” I called the Ph.D. in Creativity a bullshit program. But I also called U. of the Arts a top-notch school, and it is. (In the theatre, we evaluate schools by how well they feed Broadway with their graduates, and UA is up there with NYU/Tisch, Carnegie-Mellon, Baldwin-Wallace, and other leading theatre schools.) But in the arts, we generally break things down between the fine arts and the performing arts. Under the latter, we go for a further breakdown in theater and music. Under the latter, we go for a further breakdown between, say, composition and performance. And most schools that award a doctorate in any of these areas award them in specific areas of “the arts.” I question whether a “Ph.D. in Creativity” will adequately qualify a person to teach in a specific sub-field of the arts and will make them attractive to a hiring committee. It is likely that such a person will be evaluated more on their masters degree than such a one-size-fits-all doctorate, because creativity as a major falls under the same banner as, say, leadership as a major. Will you be qualified? Absolutely, but you’ll likely be passed over for someone with a Ph.D. in a more specific area of the arts. So I trust that I’ve now made myself perfectly obtuse: Kizmet = No bullshit. U. Arts = No bullshit, until now, especially at over $130,000. Ph.D. in Creativity = Bullshit.
OK. So then please allow me to present the entire collection of Psychology and Humanistic Studies graduate degrees at Saybrook University https://www.saybrook.edu/blog/2011/05/11/our-programs/
Since we’re going for a list, here’s one that was part of the M.A. “Big Three" at one time: Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. Back when I did my M.A., the Big 3 were Antioch, Goddard, and Vermont College of Norwich University. I visited all three, applied to both Antioch and VC, was accepted by both, and ultimately chose VC. The program at VC was originally at Goddard (to the extent that it was called the Goddard MA program at VC); Goddard had sold their low-residency programs to Norwich with the understanding that they would not reenter the nontraditional market for three years. Three years later, Goddard established new distance programs, but they were not as good as the ones they sold to Norwich. Eventually, Goddard would dump their traditional residential programs and go strictly low residency. Antioch would ultimately shut their college down, but the alumni generated enough support that they were able to reopen. (Keep in mind that Antioch had lots of famous alumni, including included both Rod Serling and Coretta Scott King.) However, the graduate program (called the IMA, or Individualized Master of Arts) was part of Antioch University, which had separated from the college a few years earlier. Honestly, I have no idea what they’re doing these days. But at the time, their residency was limited to three days at the beginning of the program. Vermont College’s program had a one-week colloquium semi-annually, which was optional, and bimonthly one-day “interdisciplinary seminars” held in several cities, primarily on the east coast. The colloquia were so cool that I attended a few of them even after I graduated: $200 for the entire week including room and board on a great campus. The cafeteria was run by the New England Culinary Institute, which was based on the VC campus. All in all, a great, cheap vacation. In the late 1990's Norwich would sell VC to The Union Institute, which took the cream of the crop programs (including the one from which I graduated several years earlier), trashed the rest, and resold the campus to what is now Vermont College of Fine Arts. Among other things, Union turned their MA into an online program, and I am unaware of any residency that still exists. Why did Union buy VC from Norwich in the first place? Two reasons – first, they were having their problems with Ohio’s Board of Regents at the time, and wanted to have a fallback in case they lost their degree-granting authority. At worst, they could have moved the whole operation to VC, which would bring them under the New England Association. Second, Union traditionally had only bachelor’s and doctoral programs – purchasing VC from Norwich gave them ready-made master’s programs as well. After the purchase, of course, they changed their name to the current Union Institute & University, ultimately cleaned up their act with OBR, and dumped VC. The one thing that has not changed in the pictures I’ve painted is the program at Goddard, which exists today as it did when I first looked at the three programs 30 years ago. At Goddard, you have one faculty advisor, with whom you communicate every few weeks to report on your progress. You spend nine days in residence on campus (I think there is also a west coast residency) at the beginning of every semester. The reason I chose VC over Goddard is that Goddard’s former program (the one sold to Norwich) required you to have one core professor, a second core advisor (chosen by your core), and a field faculty advisor from outside the university (nominated by you). (The FFA was the equivalent to an adjunct under the old Union Graduate School model that is no longer used by UI&U.) Goddard’s reconstituted program, designed three years after the old programs were sold, have only one advisor, a Goddard core – and that’s the model they still use today. It seemed to me that going for their program would be like putting all your eggs in one basket, and I disliked the notion of placing my academic fate in the hands of only one person. Goddard has also been known to have financial problems throughout its history, evidenced by both the sale of the original programs to Norwich and the closure of their traditional residential programs. Even today, I would think that there’s some risk that they could eventually join the list of colleges that are closing. Keep in mind, for example, that a former president of Goddard is Jane Sanders (Bernie’s wife), who would eventually take the helm at Burlington College, which did, in fact, close a couple of years ago. Anecdotal conclusion: At the time I visited all thee schools (late 1980’s), they all had a different flavor to them. At Antioch’s campus in Yellow Springs, OH, almost every car had anti-war bumper stickers on them. (We had no wars going at the time). In short, they were stuck in the 1960’s. At Goddard, I had lunch in their cafeteria with the professor who would have been my core advisor if I had gone with them. Hanging in the cafeteria was a long computer banner that had been printed on a dot matrix printer (remember them?) that said, “We came out proud, and we’re not going back in the closet.” Cute, but it seemed a bit naïve in the age of AIDS. In short, Goddard impressed me as being stuck in the 1970’s. The VC campus in Montpelier (Vermont's state capital), about 10 miles from Goddard, was the only school that impressed me as being in the 1980’s. Combined with the fact that they had a core professor in the Philly area, where I lived at the time, and because of their affiliation with a major university (traditional students were constantly traveling between the VC campus in Montpelier and Norwich’s main campus in Northfield), I chose the VC master’s program (making me a Norwich grad) and never regretted it. But that program no longer exists, having eventually been trashed by Union in favor of the online model. The only one of the Big 3 that exists as it did then is Goddard. Would I choose it today? No, because of the two reasons I outlined above. But it’s an honorable program for those who are willing to make that risky choice.
I wouldn't say that the Ph.D. in Creativity is a BS degree. I mean, I wouldn't pay 130k for one but it might be helpful to those MFA, professor hopefuls. I've read a few articles where MFAs are finding it difficult to land faculty positions as there is now an increased demand for a Ph.D. I think since were discussing "BS" degrees. How do you feel about professional doctorates such as DNP, DBH (doctor of behavioral health), DHA and DMS (doctor of medical sciences)? I didn't mention the Ed.D., DBA and DPA because IMO, they are great qualifications for teaching.
